His first important purchase was made in 1768. It was that of a work already famous, and which for more than a century had been one of the ornaments of the Barberini Palace at Rome. This statue of a boy playing at the game of tali, or ‘osselets’ (figured in Ancient Marbles in the British Museum, part ii, plate 31), was found among the ruins of the Baths of Titus, during the Pontificate of Urban the Eighth. During the same year, 1768, Mr. Towneley acquired, from the Collection of Victor Amadei, at Rome, the circular urn with figures in high relief—which is figured in the first volume of Piranesi’s Raccolta di Vasi Antichi—and also the statue of a Nymph of Diana, seated on the ground. This statue was found in 1766 at the Villa Verospi in Rome.
Formation of the Towneley Gallery.
Two years afterwards, several important acquisitions were made of marbles which were discovered in the course of the excavations undertaken by Byres, Gavin Hamilton, and Jenkins, amidst the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli. The joint-stock system, by means of which the diggings were effected, no less than the conditions which accompanied the papal concessions that authorised them, necessitated a wide diffusion of the spoil. But whenever the making of a desirable acquisition rested merely upon liberality of purse or a just discrimination of merit, Mr. Towneley was not easily outstripped in the quest. Amongst these additions of 1769–71 were the noble Head of Hercules, the Head said, conjecturally, to be that of Menelaus, and the ‘Castor’ in low relief (all of which are figured in the second part of Ancient Marbles).
Two terminal heads of the bearded Bacchus—both of them of remarkable beauty—were obtained in 1771 from the site of Baiæ. These were found by labourers who were digging a deep trench for the renewal of a vineyard, and were seen by Mr. Adair, who was then making an excursion from Naples. In the same year the statue of Ceres and that of a Faun (A. M., ii, 24) were purchased from the Collection in the Macarani Palace at Rome. In 1772 the Diana Venatrix and the Bacchus and Ampelus were found near La Storta. It was by no fault of Towneley’s that the Diana was in part ‘restored,’ and that blunderingly. He thought restoration to be, in some cases, permissible; but never deceptively; never when doubt existed about the missing part. In art, as in life, he clave to his heraldic motto ‘Tenez le vrai.’
In 1771, also, the famous ‘Clytie’—doubtfully so called—was purchased from the Laurenzano Collection at Naples.
The curious scenic figure on a plinth (A. M., part x) together with many minor pieces of sculpture, were found in the Fonseca Villa on the Cælian Hill in 1773. In the same year many purchases were made from the Mattei Collection at Rome. Amongst these are the heads of Marcus Aurelius and of Lucius Verus. And it was at this period that Gavin Hamilton began his productive researches amidst the ruins of the villa of Antoninus Pius at Monte Cagnolo, near the ancient Lanuvium. This is a spot both memorable and beautiful. The hill lies on the road between Genzano and Civita Lavinia. It commands a wide view over Velletri and the sea. To Hamilton and his associates it proved one of the richest mines of ancient art which they had the good fortune to light upon. Mr. Towneley’s share in the spoil of Monte Cagnolo comprised the group of Victory sacrificing a Bull; the Actæon; a Faun; a Bacchanalian vase illustrative of the Dionysia; and several other works of great beauty. The undraped Venus was found—also by Gavin Hamilton—at Ostia, in 1775.
The acquisition of the ‘Towneley Venus.’
In the next year, 1776, Mr. Towneley acquired one of the chiefest glories of his gallery, the Venus with drapery. This also was found at Ostia, in the ruins of the Baths of Claudius. But that superb statue would not have left Rome had not its happy purchaser made, for once, a venial deflection from the honourable motto just adverted to. The figure was found in two severed portions, and care was taken to show them, quite separately, to the authorities concerned in granting facilities for their removal. The same excavation yielded to the Towneley Collection the statue of Thalia. From the Villa Casali on the Esquiline were obtained the terminal head of Epicurus, and the bust thought to be that of Domitia. The bust of Sophocles was found near Genzano; that of Trajan, in the Campagna; that of Septimius Severus, on the Palatine, and that of Caracalla on the Esquiline. A curious cylindrical fountain (figured in A. M., i, § 10) was found between Tivoli and Præneste, and the fine representation in low relief of a Bacchanalian procession (Ib., part ii) at Civita Vecchia. All these accessions to the Towneley Gallery accrued in 1775 or 1776.
Of the date of the Collector’s first return to England with his treasures I have found no record. |The Towneley Gallery in England.| But it would seem that nearly all the marbles hitherto enumerated were brought to England in or before the year 1777. The house, in London, in which they were first placed was found to be inadequate to their proper arrangement. Mr. Towneley either built or adapted another house, in Park street, Westminster, expressly for their reception. Here they were seen under favourable circumstances as to light and due ordering. They were made accessible to students with genuine liberality. And few things gave their owner more pleasure than to put his store of knowledge, as well as his store of antiquities, at the service of those who wished to profit by them. He did so genially, unostentatiously, and with the discriminating tact which marked the high-bred gentleman, as well as the enthusiastic Collector.
A contemporary critic, very competent to give an opinion on such a matter, said of Mr. Towneley: ‘His learning and sagacity in explaining works of ancient art was equal to his taste and judgment in selecting them.’[[62]] If, in any point, that eulogy is now open to some modification, the exception arises from the circumstance that early in life, or, at least, early in his collectorship, he had imbibed from his intercourse with D’Hancarville somewhat of that writer’s love for mystical and supersubtle expositions of the symbolism of the Grecian and Egyptian artists. To D’Hancarville, the least obvious of any two possible expositions of a subject was always the preferable one. Now and then Towneley would fall into the same vein of recondite elaboration; as, for example, when he described his figure of an Egyptian ‘tumbler’ raising himself, upon his arms, from the back of a tame crocodile, as the ‘Genius of Production.’